


Raistlin and the Rabbit

by Aroihkin



Category: Dragon Age, Dragonlance - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 16:26:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/640826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aroihkin/pseuds/Aroihkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the Tower of High Sorcery of Palanthas, to the Circle Tower of Ferelden. This isn't the trip Raistlin Majere planned for, but he will always adapt. (And I, apparently, will always re-use my OCs.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raistlin and the Rabbit

**Author's Note:**

> The original prompt: [**here**](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/3486.html?thread=8629150#t8629150).
> 
> Absurd request is absurd.
> 
> I have the oddest craving for a crossover of sorts. If anyone has read the Dragonlance books, I want Raistlin Majere to accidentally mess up his time travel spell and end up in the Circle of Magi. (Or if anon has a better idea for him to end up there, that's fine.)
> 
> He's stuck in the tower now, and either F!Surana or F!Amell finds him very interesting. Most of it is up to anon, but I would adore if his eyes could be solved via healing, and quite a bit of exploration into "everyone was kissing everyone at the tower." Our F!Mage just can't take her hands off of the interesting new fellow. :D

The coughing from within the cell was painful just to _listen_ to, the sound wet and harsh as though the one it came from loosened and expelled tissue with every wracking instance. The templar standing guard in the hall fidgeted nervously as Amell crept by, a tray with various dishes rattling softly on her arm. She hesitated, and then twisted the key she'd been given in the lock, pushing the thick door open.

The sharp, acrid smell of illness permeated the tiny room, but she steeled herself and slipped in anyway. It was dark, in here. Darker than the slender window set in the wall should have allowed it to be, as though the very light was consumed by the strange man's ailments and presence.

A spell wisp flickered into being over her head, lighting the room with its ever-spinning, ever-moving glow -- and Amell very nearly dropped the tray in her hands and fled to fetch a senior enchanter at what she saw.

Oh, she'd heard of a mysterious man appearing out of thin air in the Harrowing Chamber two nights ago... who hadn't? Not much new and exciting happened in the Tower, but this had been a shock that hadn't been containable by stern templars. Word had spread practically in real-time among the mages and apprentices, but Amell hadn't heard about _this_ part. The man's skin was metallic gold, gleaming with fever in the wisp's cold, ghostly light, his white hair plastered to his forehead and hiding much of his face. He was curled tightly on the narrow cot, a cloth pressed to his mouth in one attenuated hand as his coughs continued to wrack him, with no time to breathe in between.

Instead of fleeing, Amell set the tray down on the small table beside the cot. She gathered her courage as the man's coughing finally began to lessen, and wove a simple healing spell between her hands, laying them on sweat-dampened velvet robes that _burned_ against her skin, as though the man beneath them was made of red coals and not flesh at all.

She let out an undignified squeak as a burning-hot hand suddenly latched onto her wrist, the grip like steel, and she found herself staring into golden eyes with strangely-shaped pupils. Were those... hourglasses? It was hard to be sure, in the ever-shifting light of her spell wisp. He wasn't _human_. He couldn't be.

"Need... hot... water," he was speaking to her, though his voice was little more than a tortured rasp. His grip on her wrist tightened until the pain jarred her out of her staring, and he weakly shoved her away. "Hurry!"

So Amell did what any apprentice would do: she fled.

But most apprentices would have fled to the nearest templar -- conveniently right outside the cell door -- or possibly to the First Enchanter himself who had assigned her this job to begin with. Amell didn't do either of those things. She bolted to the nearest source of hot water, grabbing one of the senior enchanters' tea kettles right off their hearth and then ran back to the cell before said senior enchanter could even work up a proper order to the contrary, damn near as curious as she was horrified.

The stranger had dumped out the cup of water on the tray with shaking hands, barely managing to sit upright. Another cough wracked him as Amell slid back into the dark room, her spell wisp careening around and above her head and throwing the room into all sorts of weird shadows and light. "Hot water," she said, "what do you--"

The golden-skinned stranger, mouth covered with a cloth in his hand, pointed impatiently at the emptied cup. Startled, Amell poured the hot water in, wrinkling her nose a bit at the terrible smell whatever herbs he'd thrown into the bottom made when it mixed in. "That smells like shit," she noted, because she was a real diplomat like that.

He barely had the energy to scowl at her, and she wisely left the room, leaving the kettle behind.

\- - - - -

"So, d'you have a name?" Amell asked the next day, perched on a wooden chair in the little cell, her arms on its back and her weight on the balls of her feet, watching as the strange man picked at the food she'd brought him with far more curiosity than hunger. He'd barely touched the stuff she'd brought yesterday, though the kettle had been empty. Maybe he was a freaky plant person.

"Of course I do," the man's voice was a hiss. Maybe he was a snake and he'd eat if she brought him rodents? Amell considered it, staring at him in the weird lighting. Irving had decided to allow their guest his own staff back, after determining that he wasn't an abomination... something she wasn't all that sure of yet, herself. The staff stood in the corner of the room with its own cold white glow shining from the crystal in the top. He was definitely a mage, Amell just hadn't decided if he was a _human_ mage.

"You gonna tell me what it is?" she tried next, "Or do I get to make one up? Because it'll probably be something stupid if I do, so, you know. You're warned and shit."

The stranger stared at her for a while, contemplatively. His eyes were even freakier in the stronger and steadier light of his staff; definitely hourglasses. And they had that certain weird sharpness to them... "Raistlin Majere," he rasped, finally, "my name is Raistlin Majere. And yours?" The last two words were full of quiet menace, as though meant as some kind of attack.

"Akara Amell," was her easy reply, _staring_ hard right back at him, "I know, I know, it's a stupid fucking name. But y'know, it's the only one I've got, so there's that."

"You are quite peculiar, Akara Amell," Raistlin almost sounded surprised, but she wasn't sure.

"Says the guy with the freaky stare and the freaky skin and the... living-off-water, thing," Akara sniffed, "but hey, normal people don't get weird jobs like this."

"Is that so?" the other mage continued to stare at her, though his long fingers toyed with a grape. "And why, pray tell, did you 'get' this job? You are clearly no diplomat." It wasn't even disdainful sounding.

"Because I'm the only one nuts enough to actually do it," she shrugged, "nuts enough and not too busy to do it, anyway. You gonna actually eat, Majere, or is something wrong with the food?" But his only response was to push the tray away, suddenly coughing again, and Akara snatched up the empty kettle and ran off to trade it for a full one.

\- - - - -

A few days later, and Akara had no idea how he'd done it, the golden mage had talked Irving and Greagoir into giving him a much longer leash. Akara, still tasked with keeping an eye on him in between her classes and studies, only ever found Majere in the libraries after that. She even caught him asleep a few times, slumped over a work table with his long-fingered hands splayed over the tome he'd been reading, the warmth of flickering candlelight vying with the coldness of his staff's light in how to play over his metallic-skinned features.

Jowan was the first person to catch her drawing him. He found her in the library with her charge, and leaned over her shoulder to look at the parchment tucked behind a stack of books. "Shouldn't you be studying?"

"Shit!" Akara clapped her hand over her mouth to keep her voice down. Way over yonder, Majere frowned at the disruption and glanced up, but then went right back to reading. He seemed to be trying to consume the entire catalog of books the Tower held. And not without some success, either... since it seemed to be all that he was interested in doing. It actually had the templars relaxing a little back into their routines, since a reading mage was at least a quiet and not-turning-abomination mage.

"Maybe I _am_ studying," she shot back in a whisper, belatedly, "did you think of that? And stop hovering!"

"Oh-ho," Jowan wiggled his eyebrows, "but studying _what_ , I wonder?"

"Fade spirits, obviously," Akara snapped, "look, how often do you think I'm going to see someone like him? I've gotta take the chance while I've got it. Irving's got me lurking around the guy half the day as it is, since the templars can't be expected to fetch him food and shit."

"Mmhmm," Jowan sat down beside her, conveniently so that the stack of books mostly hid him from Majere. Everyone was scared shitless of him, it seemed. No one knew what to do with him, not even Irving. "But what kind of spirit?"

"Fuck if I know," Akara shrugged, going back to her drawing, "isn't that for the real mages to figure out?"

"And Greagoir," Jowan sounded sour.

"Yeah," Akara did, too.

\- - - - -

"The other apprentices are not nearly as uncouth as you," Raistlin commented one day, quite out of the blue.

Akara looked up from her studying -- and it was actual studying this time! -- and blinked at him. "What...?"

"You were taken by the Chantry late," the other mage said, folding his long fingers together over the book he'd just finished reading from cover to cover, "were you not? I've learned something of how all of these mages came to be in this Tower, and why there are knights at every corner... but you don't speak as one raised here. Not like most of the others."

"Yeah," Akara didn't see a point in lying about it, "I was a Denerim street rat extraordinaire and a damn good thief. Then I tripped one day and spewed fireballs and shit everywhere. The Chantry didn't exactly have to look far to find me."

"Tripped one day...?" Majere pinned her with his freakish stare, "I doubt that. Everything I have read here indicates that a late-blooming mage usually emerges under great stress..."

"Yeah," so Akara would lie about some things, still, and she was gutsy enough to look him in the eye while doing it. She tipped her chin up, daring him to call her bluff, adrenalin surging through her veins when his eyes narrowed in response. "What can I say? It was a fuck of a trip."

Majere kept staring until she finally broke and looked away, staring down at her studies and feeling her face heat a bit. Shit, he was intense. When she chanced a glance up again, he'd taken another book from his current stack and was already engrossed in it, leaving her free to watch him a bit. He mouthed a word here and there, as though finding terms he wasn't familiar with, and she stared at the way a lock of slightly-wavy grey-white hair brushed against his cheek.

_Shit._

It wasn't like he was old, either. That hair looked like it, but he wasn't. He had young features, and it was really obvious once you got past the weird coloration. On her parchment papers full of drawings of him, lacking any color as they were, he just looked like a guy. Someone who'd have gone through his Harrowing already, sure, but not an old guy.

He had a delicate, beautiful face. And delicate, beautiful fingers. And amazing (if also amazingly _frightening_ ) eyes. And holy shit, what was wrong with her.

She went back to her studies, face heating all over again, and this time engrossed herself in it so much that she didn't even notice his glance up and his wry, bitter little smirk.

\- - - - -

He was still staying in that stupid little cell, Akara discovered, finally _not_ finding him in the library at every random hour as she had before. She paused outside the little room's door -- no longer guarded by templars at all times -- and considered whether to knock or just go about her business.

Not that she really had any business, these days. Raistlin Majere had been in the tower for weeks, now, and Irving still wanted her keeping an eye on him. Although at this point, it wouldn't have mattered if she was ordered to or not anyway...

Akara was _fascinated_.

Majere was a human. He'd been cursed, apparently, and that was why he looked the way he did and coughed so badly. Some sort of magical test... a battle of wills that he'd barely won. She'd gotten that much out of him over the weeks, and couldn't help but wonder if his was a Harrowing gone awry, maybe from another tower.

After all, apprentices like her didn't know what the Harrowing really was, other than a test. A test that could kill. If it could kill, who was to say it couldn't do other awful things?

Well, it was a theory, anyway.

She turned to go, deciding not to disturb him, even if the light shining under the door said that he was probably awake. The sound of his horrible cough made her pause, and then the sharp noise of shattering glass made her turn around and whip the door open without even thinking about it.

There was blood everywhere. That was her first impression, but it wasn't wholly accurate. Akara stepped into the room, closing the door behind her absently as she took in the scene. Majere had shattered a glass on the small bedside table, and in doing so had cut the strange skin of his hand and arm. It looked like he'd been trying to sleep, and had sat up on the edge of the bed.

"They _will not_ claim me," he hissed, grabbing both of her arms in his hands when she stepped near, his odd eyes glazed and feverish, his white hair straggling in his face. Majere's grip was too-warm and far stronger than one might expect, it actually hurt. "They will not!"

"Okay, okay. Majere, relax, you're just slicing your hand up w-worse," Akara stammered, "let go of me so I can--"

The mage released her almost as violently as he'd clamped on, and stared almost vacantly at the spell wisp floating over her shoulder as he let her work on him. Akara knelt down, plucking the bits of glass out of his skin with deft fingers that had once picked locks and pockets instead of casting spells, and then folded a simple healing spell onto the leftover mess. His strange golden skin, too warm and too metallic, knit itself before her eyes.

At least spells affected him. To look at him, you'd almost think they wouldn't.

"You were being harassed by the demons in the Fade?" she hazarded once this was all done, glancing up at his face. He'd claimed not to know of the Fade, upon arriving, but she knew he'd read just about every book they had on the subject here, now. And a great many other subjects besides.

"Yes," a soft shudder went through the mage, and Akara watched him close his eyes for a moment. "Such has always been my fate, it would seem. But these... there are so many of them. They promise me a wide variety of prizes, but in the end they are just like him."

"Him?" the apprentice tore her gaze away, to start cleaning up the glass on the floor and the table. She was pretty sure that if she kept staring he was going to entrance her as surely as any demon might.

"An ancient archmagus whose name would mean nothing to you," Majere sounded... exhausted, drained. His voice was almost more like one long sigh than actual speech. "Who desired to possess my life force, my shattered body, my soul. In exchange for a measure of his power, of course."

Akara could feel his gaze latch back onto her, bore into her head, and found herself wondering what the demons had tried to tempt him with instead.

"Every mage has to resist them," she offered, despite knowing he already knew that. It was probably said in half the books he'd read. "It's the price of our magic."

"Indeed," Majere's tone was wry, and Akara glanced up to see him smirking, faint and bitter. "And yet it is not considered enough of a price. You must live under the thumb of these knights, as well, all your lives? Slaves to doctrine and whim by turns, those with power have been made downtrodden and dissolute 'for the greater good', held there by the swords of ever-so-pious knights..."

That last part was accompanied with a sneer, and Akara stared. "You're going to get your ass killed with that talk," she whispered.

"Hardly," Majere snorted with disdain at that idea, and laid back on his cot.

Akara finished picking up the broken glass, and saw herself out.

The next morning, he was gone. Word spread quickly of trouble within the Chantry, of rebellion fermenting in the Circles... of a man with golden skin and eyes like hourglasses. When Duncan of the Grey Wardens arrived looking for recruits, Akara was the first to volunteer.

She wanted to go _out there_. She wanted to know exactly what the demons had offered him.

And whether or not he'd accepted.


End file.
